In recent years, the use of unregulated and unregistered provision for looked after children (LAC) and care leavers in the UK has increased but the drivers for this increase are not fully understood. Moreover, concerns have been raised about the quality of the care, support and safeguarding offered by some of the providers and the decisions being made by local authorities (LAs) in placing children in these settings. The Department for Education (DfE), working with Sir Alan Wood, Chair of the Residential Care Leadership Board, therefore commissioned the research on which this report is based to gain a better overall understanding of the issues around this type of provision.
The research included a review of DfE statistics on LAC in England and in-depth telephone interviews with Ofsted and LAs. From an original sample of 23 LAs, 22 agreed to participate in the research study, with a total of 42 individuals participating in the interviews. The interviewees all had responsibility for arranging placements or overseeing the processes through which this is done and included directors of children’s services, heads of commissioning, operations directors, strategic and service managers for children’s commissioning and LAC, senior placements officers and quality assurance managers. The interviews lasted between approximately 45 and 60 minutes. It is important to bear in mind that the information gathered through the interviews is selfreported and no checks on actual practice were conducted.
